Your business and its assets are likely being targeted on a regular basis by malicious attackers. Often silly and simple mistakes are all that’s needed to grant them access to your networking systems and more.
Once they have gained access, attackers can cause havoc, leading to what’s called an ‘incident’.
An incident can have grave consequences for more than just your operational systems and online performance, it could lead to a loss of sensitive information – including financial information.
From legal troubles to an inability to continue operating on your current systems, attacks can be hugely damaging to a business that relies on operational systems.
Thankfully, however, as many incidents are a result of simple and easy to make mistakes, they can be sorted with simple and easy to make fixes. Here are just some of the ways that you can make sure that your online operations remain as secure as possible.
The Right Tech
First and foremost you need the right tech. Proper practice is an additional line of defence on top of proper security tech, but it’s useless without the tech to defend from hackers in the first place.
You will need a high-quality firewall in order to make sure that your businesses’ networking systems are as safe as they can be. While many may see this as an unnecessary expense, you can pick up a top-of-the-range enterprise firewall for a bargain from refurbishing experts.
There will be no compromise on quality, and in fact, they are supplied with a warranty from places like ETB Technologies, but won’t break the bank as a brand new one would.
Pentesting
You cannot address a problem if you do not yet know that it exists, which is why you need pentesting for your online operations. Pentesting, or penetration testing, uses the services of cybersecurity professionals and will uncover weak points in your systems.
Ethical hackers will carry out an authorised attack on your systems – don’t worry, no damage will be done, they are just trying to see if they can gain access.
If they are able to get in, then they will, then they can report back and let you know exactly how they managed to penetrate your systems. From there you will have an idea of where problems may lie and how to amend them moving forward.
Training
If you have carried out pentesting, the next step is training, for both your in-house and outsourced staff.
Simple mistakes such as poor password management are all that’s needed to grant an attacker access to your systems, so it’s important that your teams follow best practices consistently.
There should be some general rules, such as no unauthorised updates and no use of obsolete tech to make sure you are working from a safe foundation.
From there you can go into more specific training which can be carried out by a cybersecurity professional who will be able to provide role-specific guidance to your teams.
A well-trained team with all the right tech in place is enough to dissuade the most skilled hackers from even attempting to penetrate your systems
